


And I’ll Hold You With Such Delicacy

by theshipsfirstmate



Series: I Found Peace in Your Violence [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, because kastle is TOO MUCH, frank's thoughts on freedom, post-finale ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 12:58:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12959721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: Post-s1. Frank considers his new life, and the meaning of freedom."Maybe freedom means a world where he doesn’t have to be the villain of every story. Maybe it means prying open the cage he’s built up around his heart, and seeing if there’s anything left to offer her."





	And I’ll Hold You With Such Delicacy

_A/N: OK, so I wanted to write a post-finale follow-up to[I Found Peace in Your Violence](http://theshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com/post/168144015594/punisher-fic-i-found-peace-in-your-violence), but I couldn’t decide whether it should be Frank POV or Karen. So here’s a little Frank ficlet to bridge the gap to their post-finale meeting._

_Title from “[Me and You](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dri58RGH931M&t=MGI2N2I2MmJhMGM3Njg4OTM1MGNkNzQ1M2JkNWFiYjExNWVkMDc2NyxDOFdSOFdaQw%3D%3D&b=t%3AiAw4tJIAalN1OvhWtUFPsQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Ftheshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F168354893344%2Fpunisher-fic-and-ill-hold-you-with-such-delicacy&m=1)” by Jake Bugg._

**And I’ll Hold You With Such Delicacy**

“Enjoy your freedom, Mr. Castle,” Marion James tells him, like he’s the one who should be thanking her. His ears are ringing a little, but he can still parse the tone.

“Though, I do wonder,” she adds, snidely, “what freedom means to a man like you.”

In a split second, Frank’s breath catches and he sees a pair of blue eyes, so clear, like they’re right there in front of him. They blink, and so does he, and then they’re gone again.

The words echo in his mind as he’s finally set free – slippery new IDs stuffed into a battered leather wallet after he double-checks that the folded-up photograph is still in the back – and then the whole way back to the park-side spot where he’d abandoned the van three long days ago.  _“What freedom means to a man like you.”_  

He sends Curtis a text about finding a place to stay. Hell, he might even be able to rent an apartment or something, he thinks, kicking the engine into gear and scrubbing his hands over his face before peeling away from the curb.

Maybe freedom means he’ll be able to drive past Central Park without feeling like a hole’s been blown through his midsection. Not yet, but maybe someday.

Billy had picked the carousel in the hopes of crippling him before their showdown even began, and it had very nearly worked. He saw Maria and the kids around every turn, heard their voices over the terrified hostages and screaming calliope, but something had carried him through, kept his focus sharp until the bitter and bloody end. He didn’t realize until it was over – until he sat still in the shaky silence of a supposed victory, with poor Madani bleeding out beside him – that it wasn’t really something, at all. It was  _someone_.

He had wanted to run, so badly, the second the sirens started towards them. He gave serious consideration to bolting, leaving the victims to the medics and the judgement to the cops and courts. But he knows that there’s only one place he would have run. And he knows that when he got there, Karen would have told him to stay, to do it the right way.

Maybe freedom means a world where he doesn’t have to be the villain of every story. Maybe it means prying open the cage he’s built up around his heart, and seeing if there’s anything left to offer her.

He’s tried his damnedest to pretend – he lasted two whole days in that cell before he cracked even a little – but something’s changed inside him. Maybe it’s  _been_ changing, since that night at her apartment when she gave him everything he didn’t know how to ask for. He remembers the answering press of her lips to his, the heated look in her eyes even as she pulled the emergency brake to keep them from accelerating over a cliff.

And now, in the crisp, honest light of a late autumn day, Frank thinks of his future and sees her face again, so clearly he whispers her name aloud. In the rearview mirror, the cloud of his breath masks the truth written all over his face for just a second. There’s nothing left to deny.

Maybe freedom means driving aimlessly around the city for the first time in a long time, without a mark to hit or a gun to jump in front of or a wire to cut on a ticking bomb. Maybe it means not have to feel guilty when he realizes he’s turned down Karen’s block.

He wants to tell her that he’s a free man, wants to see her eyes light up and her lips purse into a hopeful smile at the news. He remembers back in that hospital room, what feels like a lifetime ago, how she had looked so beautifully relieved when Red’s dopey lawyer buddy came in to announce that the death penalty was off the table. They barely knew each other then, and still, her grin was burned on the insides of his eyelids that day.

Now he’s in so much deeper. He knows what it’s like to hold her, and there’s no coming back from that – he’s practically aching for her to throw herself into his arms again. She keeps doing it, looping her arms around his neck and taking him by total surprise. It’s dizzying, how many things it makes him feel at once.

It never happens when they’re in danger. No, when the shit’s hitting the fan, Karen’s like a kamikaze, bold and brazen, tip-toeing on the razor’s edge of her own mortality in service of some greater good. His heart thuds just thinking about it, how quick she is to throw herself in front of a bullet or run back towards a bomb, how easily she had pressed his gun to her own chin in the hotel that day.

And then in the elevator, he remembers, she had found her restraint, somehow mustering the presence of mind to tell him to go, as if she’d known that they couldn’t spare the time it would take for the world to stop turning.

But in these quiet moments they’ve found together, she’ll wrap herself around him like she can barely help it – sometimes just long enough for him to catch the scent of her shampoo – then pulls away like she’s done something wrong.

Maybe freedom means reaching for her first, so she knows it’s okay to hold on. Maybe it means touching her without worrying about the blood on his hands.

He’s enamored by so much of her: her brain, her heart, those eyes, that smile. He's even compelled by the things that scare him to death, chief among them her taste for heroics and the fearless way she trusts him.

He likes that they stand eye-to-eye, likes that when she hugs him tight, his face gets sandwiched into the crook where her neck meets her shoulder. He remembers how she felt grinding in his lap and sleepily pillowed across his chest in equally vivid detail, and he swears he can still taste her lips on his. God, he wants to kiss her again.

He parks the van and crosses the street, looking up to the second story windows and smiling in spite of himself. It’s been a long time since anything’s felt like a beginning.

Maybe freedom means she’ll look at him and see a new man, to match the one on the driver’s license he’s been given. Maybe it means she’ll see the future, too.

As he nears her building, his racing thoughts distill to singular emotions, each spurring another step forward. The flowers are in the window. He’s a free man. She’s right upstairs. If he believed in fate, Frank would be sure that’s what sends the old lady ambling out of the front entrance at exactly that moment. He holds the door for her and glances in at the lobby, and then he has a choice to make.

Maybe all freedom means is now, instead of scaling the fire escape, he can go to her front door and knock. Maybe it means she’ll ask him in for a drink, like this is something real, something almost ordinary. Maybe it means she’ll kiss him again.

So he does.

And she does.

And she does.

And it feels a lot like freedom, to a man like him.


End file.
